


With The Old Breed

by Wrench_Wench



Series: Fics from Wrench_Wench's Tumblr [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 17:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16877157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrench_Wench/pseuds/Wrench_Wench
Summary: Tony recruits some help packing up his parents' stuff after their deaths.A drabble cross-posted from Tumblr. Kind of a sequel to "When You're Down And Troubled".





	With The Old Breed

After his parents died, Tony had all sorts of estate matters to deal with. Sure, there were lawyers and Obi to deal with the trust fund and Stark Industries, but these were Tony's  _parents_ , and there are just some things he couldn’t pass off to someone else. So Tony would skip class for a week at a time to go sort through his parents’ things at their various houses (the house outside of LA was the worst, because things were still just as they’d left them before they went on the drive).

To make things easier to bear, he’d drag Rhodey along with him. Rhodey would complain about missing so much school (“We’re not all slacker geniuses, you know”), but he always knew when to drag Tony out of the house, and what type of pizza to order, and where his favorite pizza place was in NYC, and the best place to hide the booze so Tony doesn’t get into when they’re working (and exactly when he needs to pull it out of hiding). Tony, who’s never felt like he owes anything to anyone before, feels a huge debt of gratitude to Rhodey.

One weekend they go down to DC to go through the townhouse in Georgetown. (Tony never understood why they had the place, since the politicians usually came to them.) Tony makes a production about how the DC house has his dad’s WWII memorabilia, and how this “boring old friend of dad’s - some professor at Howard” had insisted on helping them sort through it. By the time the pull up to the townhouse, Rhodey is sick of it, and is about to tell Tony to just donate it all to a museum.

Then they walk inside and see Gabriel Jones, the last surviving Howling Commando and Rhodey’s personal hero, waiting for them. Tony’s shit eating grin tells his friend everything. They spend the weekend listening to Gabe’s war stories, and tales about his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, his time as Ambassador to France, and his “retirement” at Howard University. (Gabe doesn’t tell them about SHIELD, or how he arrived early to remove all of the classified documents stored in the secure vault in the basement.)

That weekend is what makes Rhodey see the USAF as a career, maybe even a calling, rather than a post-graduation obligation. It’s also one of the few times Tony remembers his father fondly. Professor Jones takes comfort in meeting two young people who seem capable of carrying the legacy his comrades left behind.

 

**Author's Note:**

> #I HAVE A LOT OF HOWLING COMMANDOS FEELS
> 
> I wrote this about four years ago and am cross-posting it here in case of tumblrpocalypse.
> 
> Originally had this preface: "Those moments of sincere empathy and generosity that i mentioned, the ones that caused Rhodey to form and maintain his friendship with Tony? Here’s an example of one of them."


End file.
